#99
Aren't you proud of me? I said within 24 hours and they're up in 2! HUZZAH ME. Okay, enough preening. There were a few tutorials requested and I'm doing my best to get them done, I'll post more the next post (100th!!!) but that won't be until June. I return May 31st--and hopefully will have a job *fingers crossed* so I wanted to make sure people didn't think I was forgetting about their requests/questions. I come with three tutorials as well as a preview of those to come!!
#1:
Going from this to
The amazingly talented firstillusions firstillusion requested tutorials for 2 of my entries from challenge 193 over at keira_stillness at my thread for Ask the Maker.
Composition
First off, I'll talk about what she asked in particular, "And I'd like to know if you thought up the composition of that first one before you started working on the image or if that was something you came up with when you were already working on it." To be honest I had no idea. Originally I was thinking about doing simple negative space and I started off there. I added space around her, to make her the center. Obviously there are different ways of doing this, but I duplicated the image and moved it behind the main layer--adding background. In this case it makes the background have long rectangles and sharp squares--which depending on the look you're going for can look cool I think, and may be part of what add to the painting like texture you spoke of in your request (of course, I'll go into further details later on! :D)
This is what I ended up with:
I copy merged onto a new layer and Auto Contrasted (Image>>Auto Contrast) the image. This brightened up the image own its own but I was curious so I then duplicated that layer and Auto Colored. Duplicate this layer and set one aside for a moment.
Auto contrast Auto color
>>
Obviously the auto color decreased the vibrant contrast which I liked but I also liked the subtle natural tones of auto color. In the end I ended up decreasing the Opacity of the auto color layer to 45%.
I find that it makes the image a but more natural looking but still quite vibrant. Now take that layer you put aside and go to Auto Tone.
As it is above it makes her appear a slightly sickly yellow green color. However, by lowering the opacity we add more yellow to the image which is feeling rather blue. In the end I lowered the opacity to 45%.
I wanted there to be more space around her so I copy merged onto a new layer and lowered her to my liking.
It was at this point I realized I wanted more than just negative space. I copy merged the image again and moved her around, flipping her and trying different things out. In the end I simply moved her to the left, so she cut off at the edge of her face.
Prep work
Alright, so I don't know if it's really 'prep work', per say but I don't know what else to call it. >.>
I wanted to lighten up around her face so on a new layer I took a small soft brush and added a few blobs in white. Here is what the blobs looked like ( #1, #2)--I made 2 different layers, one for each of her and set both to soft light.
Select all and copy merge onto a new layer. Now I wanted to blur the background a bit so I added a Gaussian Blur (Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur>>2.5) and set it to Soft Light.
I thought it was too much so I lowered the Fill to 50%.
Alright, so that layer blurred it and I wanted to get some of the sharpness back so I copy merged it again and went to Filter>>Sharpen>> Sharpen. It was a little too sharpened, so I lowered the fill to 50%.
100% 50%
Better!
At this point I thought it was looking a little dull so I added a Vibrance layer.
Vibrance: +40, +1
OR
Hue/Saturation: +8
Cyan: +5
So now I honestly just felt something missing, but I wasn't sure what. I knew that I wanted her to be bright but I also didn't want it to look too unnatural, so I added a Selective Color Layer.
Reds: 1, -6, -34, 7
Yellows: -13, 19, 34, 1
Cyans: 12, 36, 55, 25
Blues: 0, 0, 0, 100
Whites: -74, -4, 45, -2
Neutrals: 5, -1, 6, -3
At this point I really wanted to make Keira brighter, as well as the overall icon so I added a Curves Layer.
RGB: O: 142 I: 121
It was at this point I thought that the space around her needed to be jazzed up a bit. After going through my texture (okay, some of them--I've got LOTS) I decided to use this, by nivani and set to Screen.
So the left side of the texture is blocking our lovely lady so I added a layer mask and brushed out the area covering her.
When looking at the two of them I thought that the Keira on the left was a little too bright so I decided to play with a few textures. I used the following two (in order) #1 and #2 both by emonet25 @ grafixed_art .
After playing around with the yellow one I decided that it wasn't the color I wanted so I desaturated (Image>>Adjustments>>Desaturate) and went to Auto contrast setting the layer to soft light. I flipped it 90 degrees clockwise.
Now, it looks like too much on right side, so I moved texture to the left so that is only covering the left Keira.
The second texture I flipped clockwise and set to soft light, moving it about before settling, again right over the left Keira. I lowered the fill to 30%. It's a subtle difference but I liked it.
Next I realized that the background was a little to drab and I wanted the background to be more of a gradient, it's subtle but I think it makes a difference, so I added a Brightness/Contrast layer.
Brightness: -9
Contrast: 14
Although the contrast is better I think she's looking a little lack luster, you know? So I added a vibrance layer again.
Vibrance: 71, 5
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: -5, 18, 0
Cyan: 0, 0, -10
It's here that I notice just how yellow her skin is, but I like how everything else is looking. In this case we're going to copy merge the image onto a new layer, and then go to Variations (Image>>Adjustments>>Variations). I clicked on the More Blue 2 times, it'll vary from image to image so you may not need as much blue.
But now she's too blue, so we're going to add a mask layer and brush out the background. At this point I played with the fill and lowered it to 50%.
Almost finished!! And this isn't really a necessary step but I wanted to really make the coloring bright and vibrant so I added one final vibrance layer to finish her off.
Vibrance: 55
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: 13
Cyan: 0, 8, -11
And you're finished!!
#2
Keira close up
Now, we're going from this to this.
I knew I wanted to focus on the position of her arms so I moved the image around until I found what I wanted, which was this:
First I duplicated the layer then went to auto contrast.
I liked this enough to keep it as it was, but I wanted her to be a bit brighter so I added a Levels layer.
RGB: 6, 1.20, 253
Much better. However, I wanted there to be more light on the hand on her shoulder so I made a new layer and with a medium brush with white I lightly painted over her hand, setting the layer to soft light.
Levels Levels + white blob.
>>>
Now that she's night and bright and lovely I'm starting to to think I want some of her feature to be a little sharper. There are a few ways to do this and I let each image guide me as to which to use but for this one I used High Pass. So you'll copy merge the image onto a new layer then go to High Pass (Filter>>>Other>>>High Pass). The setting you choose will vary obviously but I set mine to 0.8. Click okay then set the image to Soft Light.
After taking the whole image in, I decided that I wanted to make Keira lighter as well as making the overall coloring a softer blue. However, I also keep her skin tone even so I added a Curves Layer with the following settings.
RGB: O:174 I: 155
Blue: O:87 I: 79 ;; O: 183 I: 194
Time to make some of those shadows more blue, so time for one of my personal favorites--Color Balance.
Midtones: -11, 0, 2
Shadows: -13, 0, 11
Time to liven her up. I wanted to really bring out the most of the colors in this image so I added a Vibrance layer.
Vibrance: 83
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: 0, 21, -3
Cyan: 0, 5, 0
At this point the background it looking a little lack luster and I want there to be more texture. No big patterns, something light. To be honest I stupidly didn't type in the info about the texture I used and I can't seem to find the original. If this looks familiar please tell me! I know it's originally in color but I can't seem to find the maker in my folder!
I added this 9 texture and set it to Soft Light.
I really liked the over all feel to the icon at this point, the texture did just the right thing--however, I wanted certain parts of her to be a little darker so I added a new layer and took a small/medium brush on black and brushed over them, setting the layer to Soft light.
>>>>
Now for the text. Text is something that I still have issues with, and am by no means a aficionado or even close or anywhere near it but should it be useful to anyone, I will include what I did. First and for most--I have a few different ways of adding text, most are towards the end of an icon (if it's not a texture).
At this point I knew I was close to done so after playing around with the text, size, color, distance, placement, etc I used Thonburi on size 10, bolded, set to a AV distance of 10.
This is what the Character box looked like:
Next, I wanted to have the word close separated but not too distracting so I kept the font simple. Using Times New Roman set to Italic in a larger size (24) I moved the spacing around and liked how it looked beneath it--almost as if it were connected to "hold me".
Here's what the character box looked like for that layer:
Almost finished! Okay, so I really wanted it image to look light and airy so I added this texture set to soft light. After playing around with the opacity & fill I kept the opacity to 100%, but lowered the fill to 55%.
I really wanted a bright and colorful icon so I added another vibrance layer.
Vibrance: 41
OR
Hue/Saturation: 0, 5, 0
I noticed that the lower left hand corner was becoming darker and although I wanted the focus more centralized, I wanted the entire icon to be light & soft so I opened a new layer and took a soft brush filled with white and brushed it over her fingers before setting the layer to soft light.
Before After
>>>>
I have become obsessed with doing this final step, I just like how it looks. Copy merge and paste the icon onto a new layer, then go to Gaussian Blur (Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur) and I set mine to 5.0. Then set the layer itself to Overlay. I vary what I set mine to, Overlay, Soft light or Hard light. I recommend trying them all and seeing what you like, it's what I do. I lowered the fill to 30% and that's it!
#3
A tutorial was requested for icon by lover_of_narnia at Ask the Maker.
In this situation the crop was taken care of, since the prompt was "no eyes", I thought this would be a perfect image. This icon is actually a combination of two images, this and this. I used the first as the primary image but I really liked the hand on her back, the show of affection was just so sweet. I cropped the first to my liking, wanting to get some of the sky in there, but the main focus to be Jane & Edward. I opened the other image and selected around Edwards hand, copied and then pasted onto the main crop.
At this point I added a mask layer and erased the majority of the area around his hand before finding a natural position for it.
Looks pretty natural doesn't it? Okay, so now I copy merged the image onto a new layer and went to Auto Contrast (Image>>Auto Contrast). I liked that look but was curious what auto color & tone would do so I duplicated the contrast layer and went to Auto Color and then Auto Tone. I liked the yellow green tinge, but I thought it too overbearing so I lowered the fill to 30%.
Auto Contrast Auto Everything Auto Everything (lower fill)
At this point I started noticing just how dark Edward was. I wanted there to be more variation of the black on his waistcoat and a more even flow of color, not just blue so I added a Levels layer.
RGB: 15, 1.45, 233
Red: 5, 0.96, 255
Green: 3, 1.00, 247
Blue: 20, 1.10, 244
Better--however the sky is almost bleached out and I want the clouds to be more visible so I took a medium sized soft brush and masked out the area.
Part of what I love about this image is the stark contrast--their clothes are somber while the world around them is bright and nature is lovely. The Levels layer helped but I want more so I added a Curves layer.
RGB: O: 146 I: 117
I didn't want to loose the blue-ish color completely so after playing with different shades of colors and settings I ended up making a New Fill Layer (Layers>>New Layer>> Solid Layer) and filling it with 42559b and setting it to Color Burn at 15%.
It's a subtle change but it gives back the blueness without taking away from the other colors as well as adding more depth to the image.
This next step is rather subtle, adding more blue to the darker areas. Depending on your image you may not need this or may want more of a difference. I added a Color Balance layer and used the following settings:
Midtones: -33, -13, -11
Shadows: 18, -1, 5
At this point I'm starting to see the clouds are becoming too light again so I added a new layer and used a soft brush on black and brushed over them, setting it to Soft Light.
Here's where my reasoning may not be up to par for some of you I'm afraid. Sometimes I'll get to a point where although I don't dislike the coloring, I simply don't feel it is finished. This is one of those times. I added a Selective Color layer and played around with everything.
Reds: 23, -18, 5, 2
Yellows: -21, 16, 40, 4
Cyans: 0, 0, 74, 54
Blues: 0, 0, 0, 100
Whites: -10, 1, 16, -13
Neutrals: 3, 2, -6, 2
After this I noticed the pinkish-red overtones and to be honest, I'm not feeling them. So I copy merged onto a new layer and went to Variations (Image>>>Adjustments>>Variations) and clicked More Cyan, then More Blue.
I know, it's very blue. To fix this we're going to lower the fill to 60% and the opacity to 50%.
At this point I want there to be more of a difference between Edward & Jane's clothes so I added a mask layer and brushed over Jane's dress. I included what my mask layer looks like here
The next few layers are very subtle changes and it's up to you folks if you use them or not.
I added a vibrance layer on the following settings:
Vibrance: 16, 9
OR
Hue/Saturation: 0, +2, 0
Next I added a Black & White gradient map, set to soft light. I wanted more darkness in the creases and folds of Jane's dress. I ended up setting the opacity to 20%.
I wanted the lines and fold to stand out more so I copy merged onto a new layer and went to Sharpen (Filter>>Sharpen>>Sharpen). I lowered the opacity to 35%, just enough to make it crisp but not painfully sharp.
Finally, I copy merged one last time and went to Gaussian Blur (Filter>>>Blur>>> Gaussian Blur) set to about 3.0, after which I set it to Hard Light and lowered the fill to 10%. It added a nice sort of light glow that I liked. And that's it!
Up coming tutorials:
Among others...
#1:
Going from this to
The amazingly talented firstillusions firstillusion requested tutorials for 2 of my entries from challenge 193 over at keira_stillness at my thread for Ask the Maker.
Composition
First off, I'll talk about what she asked in particular, "And I'd like to know if you thought up the composition of that first one before you started working on the image or if that was something you came up with when you were already working on it." To be honest I had no idea. Originally I was thinking about doing simple negative space and I started off there. I added space around her, to make her the center. Obviously there are different ways of doing this, but I duplicated the image and moved it behind the main layer--adding background. In this case it makes the background have long rectangles and sharp squares--which depending on the look you're going for can look cool I think, and may be part of what add to the painting like texture you spoke of in your request (of course, I'll go into further details later on! :D)
This is what I ended up with:
I copy merged onto a new layer and Auto Contrasted (Image>>Auto Contrast) the image. This brightened up the image own its own but I was curious so I then duplicated that layer and Auto Colored. Duplicate this layer and set one aside for a moment.
Auto contrast Auto color
>>
Obviously the auto color decreased the vibrant contrast which I liked but I also liked the subtle natural tones of auto color. In the end I ended up decreasing the Opacity of the auto color layer to 45%.
I find that it makes the image a but more natural looking but still quite vibrant. Now take that layer you put aside and go to Auto Tone.
As it is above it makes her appear a slightly sickly yellow green color. However, by lowering the opacity we add more yellow to the image which is feeling rather blue. In the end I lowered the opacity to 45%.
I wanted there to be more space around her so I copy merged onto a new layer and lowered her to my liking.
It was at this point I realized I wanted more than just negative space. I copy merged the image again and moved her around, flipping her and trying different things out. In the end I simply moved her to the left, so she cut off at the edge of her face.
Prep work
Alright, so I don't know if it's really 'prep work', per say but I don't know what else to call it. >.>
I wanted to lighten up around her face so on a new layer I took a small soft brush and added a few blobs in white. Here is what the blobs looked like ( #1, #2)--I made 2 different layers, one for each of her and set both to soft light.
Select all and copy merge onto a new layer. Now I wanted to blur the background a bit so I added a Gaussian Blur (Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur>>2.5) and set it to Soft Light.
I thought it was too much so I lowered the Fill to 50%.
Alright, so that layer blurred it and I wanted to get some of the sharpness back so I copy merged it again and went to Filter>>Sharpen>> Sharpen. It was a little too sharpened, so I lowered the fill to 50%.
100% 50%
Better!
At this point I thought it was looking a little dull so I added a Vibrance layer.
Vibrance: +40, +1
OR
Hue/Saturation: +8
Cyan: +5
So now I honestly just felt something missing, but I wasn't sure what. I knew that I wanted her to be bright but I also didn't want it to look too unnatural, so I added a Selective Color Layer.
Reds: 1, -6, -34, 7
Yellows: -13, 19, 34, 1
Cyans: 12, 36, 55, 25
Blues: 0, 0, 0, 100
Whites: -74, -4, 45, -2
Neutrals: 5, -1, 6, -3
At this point I really wanted to make Keira brighter, as well as the overall icon so I added a Curves Layer.
RGB: O: 142 I: 121
It was at this point I thought that the space around her needed to be jazzed up a bit. After going through my texture (okay, some of them--I've got LOTS) I decided to use this, by nivani and set to Screen.
So the left side of the texture is blocking our lovely lady so I added a layer mask and brushed out the area covering her.
When looking at the two of them I thought that the Keira on the left was a little too bright so I decided to play with a few textures. I used the following two (in order) #1 and #2 both by emonet25 @ grafixed_art .
After playing around with the yellow one I decided that it wasn't the color I wanted so I desaturated (Image>>Adjustments>>Desaturate) and went to Auto contrast setting the layer to soft light. I flipped it 90 degrees clockwise.
Now, it looks like too much on right side, so I moved texture to the left so that is only covering the left Keira.
The second texture I flipped clockwise and set to soft light, moving it about before settling, again right over the left Keira. I lowered the fill to 30%. It's a subtle difference but I liked it.
Next I realized that the background was a little to drab and I wanted the background to be more of a gradient, it's subtle but I think it makes a difference, so I added a Brightness/Contrast layer.
Brightness: -9
Contrast: 14
Although the contrast is better I think she's looking a little lack luster, you know? So I added a vibrance layer again.
Vibrance: 71, 5
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: -5, 18, 0
Cyan: 0, 0, -10
It's here that I notice just how yellow her skin is, but I like how everything else is looking. In this case we're going to copy merge the image onto a new layer, and then go to Variations (Image>>Adjustments>>Variations). I clicked on the More Blue 2 times, it'll vary from image to image so you may not need as much blue.
But now she's too blue, so we're going to add a mask layer and brush out the background. At this point I played with the fill and lowered it to 50%.
Almost finished!! And this isn't really a necessary step but I wanted to really make the coloring bright and vibrant so I added one final vibrance layer to finish her off.
Vibrance: 55
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: 13
Cyan: 0, 8, -11
And you're finished!!
#2
Keira close up
Now, we're going from this to this.
I knew I wanted to focus on the position of her arms so I moved the image around until I found what I wanted, which was this:
First I duplicated the layer then went to auto contrast.
I liked this enough to keep it as it was, but I wanted her to be a bit brighter so I added a Levels layer.
RGB: 6, 1.20, 253
Much better. However, I wanted there to be more light on the hand on her shoulder so I made a new layer and with a medium brush with white I lightly painted over her hand, setting the layer to soft light.
Levels Levels + white blob.
>>>
Now that she's night and bright and lovely I'm starting to to think I want some of her feature to be a little sharper. There are a few ways to do this and I let each image guide me as to which to use but for this one I used High Pass. So you'll copy merge the image onto a new layer then go to High Pass (Filter>>>Other>>>High Pass). The setting you choose will vary obviously but I set mine to 0.8. Click okay then set the image to Soft Light.
After taking the whole image in, I decided that I wanted to make Keira lighter as well as making the overall coloring a softer blue. However, I also keep her skin tone even so I added a Curves Layer with the following settings.
RGB: O:174 I: 155
Blue: O:87 I: 79 ;; O: 183 I: 194
Time to make some of those shadows more blue, so time for one of my personal favorites--Color Balance.
Midtones: -11, 0, 2
Shadows: -13, 0, 11
Time to liven her up. I wanted to really bring out the most of the colors in this image so I added a Vibrance layer.
Vibrance: 83
OR
Hue/Saturation:
RGB: 0, 21, -3
Cyan: 0, 5, 0
At this point the background it looking a little lack luster and I want there to be more texture. No big patterns, something light. To be honest I stupidly didn't type in the info about the texture I used and I can't seem to find the original. If this looks familiar please tell me! I know it's originally in color but I can't seem to find the maker in my folder!
I added this 9 texture and set it to Soft Light.
I really liked the over all feel to the icon at this point, the texture did just the right thing--however, I wanted certain parts of her to be a little darker so I added a new layer and took a small/medium brush on black and brushed over them, setting the layer to Soft light.
>>>>
Now for the text. Text is something that I still have issues with, and am by no means a aficionado or even close or anywhere near it but should it be useful to anyone, I will include what I did. First and for most--I have a few different ways of adding text, most are towards the end of an icon (if it's not a texture).
At this point I knew I was close to done so after playing around with the text, size, color, distance, placement, etc I used Thonburi on size 10, bolded, set to a AV distance of 10.
This is what the Character box looked like:
Next, I wanted to have the word close separated but not too distracting so I kept the font simple. Using Times New Roman set to Italic in a larger size (24) I moved the spacing around and liked how it looked beneath it--almost as if it were connected to "hold me".
Here's what the character box looked like for that layer:
Almost finished! Okay, so I really wanted it image to look light and airy so I added this texture set to soft light. After playing around with the opacity & fill I kept the opacity to 100%, but lowered the fill to 55%.
I really wanted a bright and colorful icon so I added another vibrance layer.
Vibrance: 41
OR
Hue/Saturation: 0, 5, 0
I noticed that the lower left hand corner was becoming darker and although I wanted the focus more centralized, I wanted the entire icon to be light & soft so I opened a new layer and took a soft brush filled with white and brushed it over her fingers before setting the layer to soft light.
Before After
>>>>
I have become obsessed with doing this final step, I just like how it looks. Copy merge and paste the icon onto a new layer, then go to Gaussian Blur (Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur) and I set mine to 5.0. Then set the layer itself to Overlay. I vary what I set mine to, Overlay, Soft light or Hard light. I recommend trying them all and seeing what you like, it's what I do. I lowered the fill to 30% and that's it!
#3
A tutorial was requested for icon by lover_of_narnia at Ask the Maker.
In this situation the crop was taken care of, since the prompt was "no eyes", I thought this would be a perfect image. This icon is actually a combination of two images, this and this. I used the first as the primary image but I really liked the hand on her back, the show of affection was just so sweet. I cropped the first to my liking, wanting to get some of the sky in there, but the main focus to be Jane & Edward. I opened the other image and selected around Edwards hand, copied and then pasted onto the main crop.
At this point I added a mask layer and erased the majority of the area around his hand before finding a natural position for it.
Looks pretty natural doesn't it? Okay, so now I copy merged the image onto a new layer and went to Auto Contrast (Image>>Auto Contrast). I liked that look but was curious what auto color & tone would do so I duplicated the contrast layer and went to Auto Color and then Auto Tone. I liked the yellow green tinge, but I thought it too overbearing so I lowered the fill to 30%.
Auto Contrast Auto Everything Auto Everything (lower fill)
At this point I started noticing just how dark Edward was. I wanted there to be more variation of the black on his waistcoat and a more even flow of color, not just blue so I added a Levels layer.
RGB: 15, 1.45, 233
Red: 5, 0.96, 255
Green: 3, 1.00, 247
Blue: 20, 1.10, 244
Better--however the sky is almost bleached out and I want the clouds to be more visible so I took a medium sized soft brush and masked out the area.
Part of what I love about this image is the stark contrast--their clothes are somber while the world around them is bright and nature is lovely. The Levels layer helped but I want more so I added a Curves layer.
RGB: O: 146 I: 117
I didn't want to loose the blue-ish color completely so after playing with different shades of colors and settings I ended up making a New Fill Layer (Layers>>New Layer>> Solid Layer) and filling it with 42559b and setting it to Color Burn at 15%.
It's a subtle change but it gives back the blueness without taking away from the other colors as well as adding more depth to the image.
This next step is rather subtle, adding more blue to the darker areas. Depending on your image you may not need this or may want more of a difference. I added a Color Balance layer and used the following settings:
Midtones: -33, -13, -11
Shadows: 18, -1, 5
At this point I'm starting to see the clouds are becoming too light again so I added a new layer and used a soft brush on black and brushed over them, setting it to Soft Light.
Here's where my reasoning may not be up to par for some of you I'm afraid. Sometimes I'll get to a point where although I don't dislike the coloring, I simply don't feel it is finished. This is one of those times. I added a Selective Color layer and played around with everything.
Reds: 23, -18, 5, 2
Yellows: -21, 16, 40, 4
Cyans: 0, 0, 74, 54
Blues: 0, 0, 0, 100
Whites: -10, 1, 16, -13
Neutrals: 3, 2, -6, 2
After this I noticed the pinkish-red overtones and to be honest, I'm not feeling them. So I copy merged onto a new layer and went to Variations (Image>>>Adjustments>>Variations) and clicked More Cyan, then More Blue.
I know, it's very blue. To fix this we're going to lower the fill to 60% and the opacity to 50%.
At this point I want there to be more of a difference between Edward & Jane's clothes so I added a mask layer and brushed over Jane's dress. I included what my mask layer looks like here
The next few layers are very subtle changes and it's up to you folks if you use them or not.
I added a vibrance layer on the following settings:
Vibrance: 16, 9
OR
Hue/Saturation: 0, +2, 0
Next I added a Black & White gradient map, set to soft light. I wanted more darkness in the creases and folds of Jane's dress. I ended up setting the opacity to 20%.
I wanted the lines and fold to stand out more so I copy merged onto a new layer and went to Sharpen (Filter>>Sharpen>>Sharpen). I lowered the opacity to 35%, just enough to make it crisp but not painfully sharp.
Finally, I copy merged one last time and went to Gaussian Blur (Filter>>>Blur>>> Gaussian Blur) set to about 3.0, after which I set it to Hard Light and lowered the fill to 10%. It added a nice sort of light glow that I liked. And that's it!
Up coming tutorials:
Among others...